Police scandals show need for openness

Transparency advocates derailed by secretive Legislature

San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman announces that the Department of Justice will do an audit of the San Diego Police Department. Behind her are DOJ and SDPD officials, including U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy (R).
John Gibbins/UT San Diego Sr.Sta

San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman announces that the Department of Justice will do an audit of the San Diego Police Department. Behind her are DOJ and SDPD officials, including U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy (R).

SACRAMENTO  When Americans are asked about the defining feature of their government, they tend to point to its democratic institutions, but the act of electing our leaders does not necessarily ensure a free and open society.

A more important feature may be transparency – the degree that the public can see how officials conduct their business. “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both,” wrote James Madison in an oft-quoted letter about open government.

Last week was Sunshine Week, designed to remind Americans about the importance of open records and open meetings. Most people nod at these vague sentiments. But a recent San Diego scandal is a reminder of Madison’s words about the sometimes tragic consequences of a less-than-open approach toward the agencies that govern us.

By most measures, San Diego officials are doing the right things in dealing with a series of misconduct allegations against officers accused of committing crimes ranging from drunken driving to sexual assault. At a news conference Monday, the mayor, police chief and city attorney vowed to prosecute wrongdoers and said that ongoing federal investigations are the first step toward restoring “transparency.”

That word should be music to our ears, but even local officials most committed to open government run up against state laws that make it increasingly difficult for the public to know how officers are behaving – and nearly impossible to fire them for behavior that falls short of a felony. And the push at the Capitol is not toward the transparency San Diego leaders called for, but toward more secrecy.

After reporting on some police shootings and misbehavior, I’ve seen the process in action. Under state law, the public has no right to learn about the disciplinary background of the officer. The public rarely ever learns anything of substance beyond whether the officer was cleared, unless it comes out in any subsequent civil lawsuit.

“The wall of secrecy around police officer data was years in the making, starting with the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act, signed into law in 1978,” noted a recent Sacramento Bee editorial. “That law virtually obliterated the ability of the public to find out anything about a police officer – civilian complaints, disciplinary actions and even promotions.”

In the “Copley” decision involving this newspaper in 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled that police disciplinary proceedings were private, personnel matters – a decision that police associations have used to shut down public access to information and clamp down on civilian oversight panels. Secrecy is king.

Copley won’t hinder these federal investigations or procedural reforms that don’t involve individual officers, and it won’t slow San Diego’s efforts to begin testing the use of on-body cameras for officers – an “openness” reform that has been successful in other California cities such as Rialto. But the broader problem will have to be addressed in Sacramento, where union-allied Democrats and law-and-order Republicans are reluctant to tackle this issue.

For an idea of what transparency advocates are up against, consider that last year Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law, approved overwhelmingly by legislators from both parties, that forbids police agencies from disciplining officers who have been found by district attorneys to have lied or even broken the law.

This year police unions are at it again – pushing legislation that would allow police to delete their names from public property records. County recorders argue that such secrecy will undermine the entire open property-records system and will become an invitation to real-estate fraud. It’s the latest example of the endless push for more secrecy – in a state already widely viewed as keeping the tightest lid on police records.

Police unions say their jobs are so important and dangerous that their behavior must be kept secret, but Madison and modern-day openness advocates understood that the reverse is true – the more important the governmental function, the more imperative that the public can oversee what’s going on.